The Sweetest Thing
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Napoleon and Illya find themselves at the funfair on Coney Island after a chase gone wrong, and end up with a little time to enjoy themselves. Slash. Written to a prompt from I.G. in return for a donation to my husband's fundraiser.


'If you hadn't been dallying with that ridiculous woman – ' Illya was saying sharply as he looked left and right through the milling Coney Island crowds.

'If you had more hormones than a shark you would have noticed that the entire beach was covered with glorious bikini clad ladies, and you might have missed your step too,' Napoleon replied tartly.

He was looking too, just as hard as Illya, but it was impossible to see any one person through this crowd. Unless Mendelev had a flashing arrow made of light bulbs above his head they'd never find him, and even then it wouldn't be a sure thing, since there were so many flashing and garish displays all around.

'I have sand in my shoes,' Illya groused. 'And in my mouth. And in my hair. And – '

'On your nose,' Napoleon said with a sudden grin, because he had seen how Illya's nose was glittering with little silicon beads. He reached out to dust the light sprinkling of grains away with his hand.

Their communicators warbled simultaneously, and Illya rolled his eyes. Napoleon stifled another grin, because Illya was strangely adorable when he was fed up, and he knew that if he let Illya know that he felt that way his partner would probably punch him.

In synchrony they pulled out their pens, assembled them, and the warbling ceased.

'Ah, Mr Solo, Mr Kuryakin,' came Waverly's familiar voice. 'I hear from Agent Williams that your quarry escaped you somewhere on the beach, and you've been searching through the funfair to no avail.'

'Uh – yes, sir,' Napoleon replied rather shamefacedly, and Illya added into his own communicator, 'Mr Solo suffered a tumble and brought me down with him.'

'Yes, looking at bathing beauties, I hear,' Waverly said disapprovingly, and Illya hissed _sotto voce_ at Napoleon, 'Did Williams have _binoculars_?'

'In any case, Williams subdued Mendelev about half an hour ago and he's safely tucked up in our basement,' Waverly continued. 'We're about to start the questioning.'

There was an itch running from just under Napoleon's jacket collar down to the small of his back, and his tie felt as if it were choking him. Running around New York in the summer in wool fabrics was intolerable. During the chase he had managed to rip his sleeve on a protruding bit of metal and cover the front in something that was either ice cream or sun cream when he tripped over. It wasn't a good day.

'Do you mean to say he let us carry on searching – ' he began indignantly.

'In this heat,' Illya put in.

' – for half an hour?' Napoleon finished in a growl.

Was that a chuckle at the other end of the communicator? Napoleon was sure that it was.

'Well, gentlemen, there's no need for you to come rushing back to the office,' Waverly told them. 'Why don't you get yourself an ice cream? I hear it's rather warm out there today.'

Napoleon closed the communication with another growl. He shoved the pen into his trouser pocket and stripped off the ripped, dirty, sweltering jacket and felt the sweat starting to evaporate from his shirt.

'You could have worn a t-shirt like me,' Illya pointed out, who was sleek in basic black.

Wordlessly, Napoleon shoved the jacket in the closest bin. There was no way Del Floria would be able to do anything with it. He jerked his tie off, and that followed the jacket. The sun blazed down on the white cotton of his shirt, and he stretched, feeling a little relief.

'Better?' Illya asked rather archly.

'Yes, much,' Napoleon told him, rotating his shoulders and then flicking open the top button of his shirt. He pointed at a gaily coloured stall not far away. 'Ice creams are that way. Since Waverly insisted.'

'Do you think he'll reimburse us?' Illya wondered, following Napoleon through the densely pack crowd.

'I'm not even sure he'll reimburse me for my suit jacket,' Napoleon said mournfully. 'Keep your hard earned roubles, IK. This is on me.'

((O))

'You have ice cream on your nose,' Napoleon said a few minutes later, and he pulled out his handkerchief to lightly wipe the chocolate smudge away. He only just restrained himself from wetting the cloth first with spit. Considering Illya's reaction when he had once offered him an unlit cigarette that had been between his lips, he thought his partner might explode if Napoleon used his own saliva to wipe his face.

Illya licked a trickle of melting brown ice cream from his finger, then sucked another sticky finger into his mouth and drew it back out slowly. The little _pop_ it made on leaving made something stir low in Napoleon's abdomen. It was weird how quickly and easily that feeling surged up; had been surging up more and more often recently. Maybe he had been brought down by gazing at the sunbathing beauties on the beach, but he had been running ahead of Illya because recently he had found letting Illya run in front of him in well fitting black trousers was just far too distracting. It had been a long while since he'd found himself feeling like that over another man…

'Hey, look, Ferris wheel!' he said, pointing out the great rotating wheel in a desperate attempt to distract himself.

'You want to go on?' Illya asked, half-looking up from another half-licked finger. At that angle his eyelashes seemed incredibly long, and the blue of his eyes looked like a reflection of the summer sky.

'It's been years since I've been on one,' Napoleon said, tilting his head back as they moved closer. He remembered visiting the county fair back home, having a pocket full of jingling pennies and nickels and dimes, idly wandering past pig pens, great tables covered in competitional pies, lemonade stands, and metal drums spinning out cotton candy; then coming out into a field of stalls offering prizes for shooting, throwing darts, hitting a weight up to a high up bell with a beaten up hammer, and a Ferris wheel gracefully turning at the centre of it all. It had been wonderful, sitting up there above the world, watching the fairground spreading out below him.

'Come on,' Illya said, nudging him in the side.

Napoleon came back to the present, back into his adult body with all of its solidity and little aches and pains from injuries over the years, and felt a sliver of regret. He looked at Illya then, who had his own expression of anticipation on his face, and suddenly regretted nothing at all.

'Did you have these back home?' he asked.

Illya laughed. 'Napoleon, if you haven't been to a Soviet funfair, you haven't been to a funfair at all. No,' he said, as Napoleon made a movement towards his wallet. 'You bought the ices. I'll get this one.'

((O))

It was just like being eight again, swinging in a gondola high above everything, looking out over the city and the little summer haze of pollution and the near, dense crowds of people below. Snatches of music found their way up here, and occasional laughs or squeals from other rides, but when they were at the top of the wheel it was like being in another world.

'Can you imagine what this place used to look like, hundreds of years ago?' Illya asked in a strangely quiet voice. 'Coney means rabbit, doesn't it? Perhaps there were burrows everywhere, and rabbits hopping about in the grass. Brooklyn doesn't really know what grass is any more.'

'They've been building on it for over a hundred years,' Napoleon said, but he didn't want to think about the past. He wanted to think about the now, gliding in smooth circles down and up again with his thigh pressed against Illya's on the narrow seat. 'Hey, look,' he said, pointing. 'You can just see the Empire State Building through the haze.'

'I always preferred the Chrysler,' Illya said prosaically. 'The Woolworth Building too.'

Napoleon glanced sideways at him. 'I always picked you for an admirer of the more modern styles.'

'Sometimes I prefer the classic,' Illya said, and he glanced sideways too, his eyes just catching Napoleon's for long enough for his mind to start whirring.

What was the classic? Was there a double meaning there? Was Napoleon classic in his tailored suits as opposed to Illya's modern polonecks and off-the-rack slick black jackets and tinted glasses? Wasn't Napoleon classic, with his love of fine dining instead of beatnik cafés, with his love of swing music instead of rock and roll? He wanted to look sideways again, to read something more in Illya's inscrutable eyes, but he didn't dare. He kept his gaze front and centre and watched the blurred Lowry impression of the crowd below swoop closer, and then retreat again. He listened to the jangling music well and then fade, and they were at the top of the circle again.

The wheel stopped abruptly, the gondola jerked and swung, and Illya's hand clenched hard and oh-so-briefly on Napoleon's thigh, and then slipped away again, leaving a burning sense-memory of the touch.

'I think the man with the brake must have slipped,' Napoleon murmured, looking down to see the people being let off the bottommost car before the wheel moved on a little, far more smoothly this time.

'Uh, yes,' Illya said rather breathlessly. 'Sorry.'

'Not at all,' Napoleon replied graciously. Had he minded Illya's hand clenching so firmly on his thigh? He couldn't say that he had.

Illya was silent for a moment as the wheel moved on a few degrees, then stopped again.

'I saw a gondola fall from one of these once,' he said rather abstractedly, not looking at Napoleon. 'I was – oh – I think I was about six. It must have been just before the war. Something failed, and it just crashed to the ground.'

'Were the people killed?' Napoleon asked gently.

Illya shook his head. 'I don't know. My mother hurried me away. I just remember – blood, and bodies like rag dolls. I never found out if they were dead.'

'You still wanted to come on here?' Napoleon asked, and Illya smiled. It was like the sun coming out again.

'Life is not worth living if one is not willing to face one's fears,' he said.

They were almost at the bottom now. Only a few more feet to go, and then they would be on solid ground.

((O))

'Talking of fears,' Napoleon said, and he nodded towards a garish façade, a painted image of a screaming woman, and various great mannequins of monsters. The words 'SPOOK-A-RAMA' blazed across the front.

Illya scoffed. 'Fears, Napoleon?' he asked. 'Really? When were you last scared by a haunted house?'

'It's supposed to be fun, Illya,' Napoleon chided him. 'You're not really scared, but you allow yourself to be scared.'

'I face, and have faced, far to many real threats to my life to be scared by _papier-mâché_ and sound effects,' Illya retorted.

This time it was sugar from a bag of doughnuts that Napoleon dusted from Illya's nose, and he grinned indulgently as he steered his partner towards the booth and paid for two tickets. They settled into the high-backed car, and Napoleon found that this was as pleasingly cramped as the Ferris wheel gondola for two grown men.

'It's a good thing you're short,' he murmured to Illya lightly. 'You might miss the spooky, scary cobwebs.'

'Seated, I'm no shorter than you,' Illya replied, and Napoleon laughed.

The car jerked and swooped forward, plunging into darkness and descending a little at the same time, and Napoleon was pleased to feel a little tightening in his partner's posture as something nebulous drifted over their faces.

'Really, Napoleon,' Illya murmured as there was a flashing glimpse of a skeleton locked inside a cage. 'I've been in Emory Partridge's dungeon. You remember that, don't you? That skeleton wasn't real either. Skeletons don't hold together once the soft tissues have rotted away.'

'You're no fun,' Napoleon replied, but Illya's leg was still very close against his, and their shoulders pressed together as the car spun, and as another _something_ leered out of the darkness with a blood-curdling scream, Illya jumped, and pressed closer still.

'I see your reflexes are in good order,' Napoleon murmured lightly.

'Reflexes keep me alive,' Illya replied.

It was Napoleon's turn to jump next, as something white and phosphorescent suddenly lunged towards them, and it was a moment before he realised he was holding Illya's hand, and holding it tightly. Illya was very warm, and there was a little skim of sweat between their palms. Illya laughed rather nervously, and Napoleon laughed too, but neither made a move to withdraw their hands.

The car lurched sideways, and span a little, and they were thrust close together again.

'Warm in here,' Illya said rather quietly. 'I always thought haunted houses would be cold.'

'Nothing's cold in midsummer in New York City,' Napoleon reminded him. He was so glad that he'd dumped his jacket and tie, and he'd rolled up his shirt sleeves too. The skin of his forearm was pressed against the skin of Illya's. He could feel the strength and solidity of bone and muscle. It was amazing how big Illya's hands were. He hadn't really noticed that before, but Illya's hand felt larger than his own.

'No, I suppose not,' Illya replied.

The car jerked again, and somehow their heads were close enough together that their skulls collided.

'Oh,' Napoleon said, and then – then – 'Oh!' because he could feel – Were Illya's lips touching the place on his temple that he'd hit? He felt suddenly hot and cold all through, a kind of rippling surge of energy like the flashing lights outside that came on and off in waves.

He turned his head, not daring to question this moment. Illya's lips were on his, summer-warm and tasting of beaded sugar as their car spun and jolted on its rails through the darkness. His mouth tasted of sweetness and doughnuts. Their fingers were still entwined, but Illya's free hand was moving, stroking the short hair at Napoleon's temple then raking across the back of his head, pulling him closer. Napoleon let go, let his hand stray into Illya's long, beautiful hair, inhaling that solid, masculine scent of hair and skin without the adornment of perfume or hairspray or any other chemical additions.

He surfaced, breathing deeply, his mouth full of the taste of Illya, the memory of his hot tongue and smooth teeth and the tiny little sounds of need he had made.

'When we're done here, we're going back to my place,' Illya said in a low, surprisingly steady voice. When Illya spoke like that, whether you were a Thrush captive or a lover, you didn't think to disobey him.

The car bumped, and they were out in the daylight, so suddenly that for a moment Napoleon couldn't see a thing. Then the brightness faded a little, and he saw Illya smoothing a hand over his hair as if it had just been a little ruffled by some of that awful fake cobweb. He pulled his fingers through his own hair, wondering for a brief moment if he had been subject to an extremely realistic hallucination. He glanced at Illya, and saw summer-blue eyes under long lashes with sandy tips, and he recognised that steely intent that he had heard in Illya's voice just a moment ago in the dark, and he knew it had all been absolutely real.

'We – er – were going to get cotton candy,' Napoleon said. He couldn't think of a single thing to say other than that. It was as if Illya had somehow scrambled his mind.

'You buy the cotton candy. I'll pay for the subway,' Illya said. 'I might get very sticky on the way home.'


End file.
